Population ageing is occurring in nearly every country around the world. This MOOC takes a multidisciplinary approach to explore the impact of living longer and takes into account the technological advancements, the built environment, economics and ethics to rethink what it means to 'age well' now and in the future.
Rethinking Ageing is a uniquely designed course to give you a broad overview of the many complex issues involved as we as individuals get older and on the macro-level for population ageing. You may already have a particular interest in one discipline, such as mental health and ageing or age-friendly design. We encourage you, though, to use this course to explore the other perspectives on population ageing as the modules build on each other.
View the MOOC promotional video here: http://tinyurl.com/j7lz8q8

From the lesson

Worldwide population ageing trends

The course begins with the big picture when it comes to global population ageing over the 21st century. Together we explore from both a social policy and demographer perspective what is actually happening to our current and projected lifespans. The video lectures start with Tara Sklar providing an overview for the course and the key staff involved. She is followed by Professor Simon Biggs and he presents the social, cultural and intergenerational issues to consider in population ageing. Dr Rebecca Kippen then takes us through a series of lectures where she highlights demography tools and reliable, free data sources for measuring population ageing. Both Professor Biggs and Dr Kippen are attempting to better understand the trends over the 21st century and make evidence-based predictions for the future. These lectures will form the foundation for topics to come in the later weeks as well as your first assessment, so please take the time to watch them and then participate in the related discussion board forums so we can hear from you and you can meet each other. Week one concludes with whether there are limits to future increases in life expectancy. Particularly, since some argue the current generation of children in western countries are the unhealthiest ever to live with their high rates of Type 2 Diabetes and inactivity. Will they live longer than the previous generation?